You’ll remember (or maybe not) a while back I was quite upset with the number of banks I had somehow found myself dealing with on a monthly basis. Blood sucking leeches draining my bank account off to a number of different piles of debt I’d managed to acquire over the years, and all to seemingly no positive gain in my financial position.
Well, after sitting down with my parents and formulating a plan that involved some hard decisions, I’m quite pleased to report that Debt Free in 09 is in full swing. I cashed in my RRSP just before everything went to shit, took money from the sale of my house (also done before things truly started to plummet) and a couple other places and I now sit with the finish line in sight. I know some experts might get on me about hamstringing my RRSP (again), but does it make sense to be “saving” at 4% or whatever the interest was, when I had student loans at 8%, a line of credit at 10% and a credit card at 18%?
As expected, there was some “are you sure you want to leave our happy little family?” talk from the banks I’ve cut off at the source, but I just kept telling them I wasn’t interested in their offers, I didn’t want to hear what they were trying to sell me, I just wanted out. They would pass me on to a “supervisor” and I’d go through the same thing again, but eventually I won out. The most surprising thing is I haven’t got any mail from them trying to win me back. I truly expected at least a written last ditch effort to win me back, but I’d be lying if I said I was upset they didn’t try.
Now I deal with just 3 banks. My main one, ING direct (which was the plan I came up with back when I first wrote about this), as well as one more that is definitely on life support. A conservative estimate will put me at the finish line by the end of July, and then I can start looking at what my newly freed money can do for me.
Peru? Africa? Asia? A return trip to New Zealand?
Only time will tell 
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Seriously cool stuff Bobby! I’m on the bank rationalizing warpath myself… currently with 3 banks, hoping to get down to 2 by midweek. Scotia offers a line of credit / visa combination that has a 7.99% interest rate. Fingers crossed! Have you looked into a TFSA (Tax Free Savings Account) at all?
I’ll worry about savings once I get rid of my debt
I’ll likely change one of my ING accounts over as that is where my actual “saving” happens, but this won’t happen until July.